There are many circumstances where it is necessary to effect the mixing of materials under very sanitary conditions. These circumstances include, for example, the production of food products, the production of pharmaceutical products, the production of mineral products and the production of chemical products. The materials to be mixed can be of many forms such as mixed powders, wet granules, pastes, slurries and/or liquids. In order to attain the desired degree of sanitary environment, many manufacturers and producers of the aforementioned products employ stainless steel in the components of mixers in their manufacturing and production processes.
In the food industry, for example, stainless steel mixers are utilized to transform powdery materials into agglomerated products in order to instantize these products. Stainless steel mixers are also used to produce many of the ingredients contained within food products. In addition, ready-to-eat food products are mixed and manufactured using stainless steel mixers.
In the pharmaceutical industry, for example, stainless steel mixers are used to transform powdered pharmaceutical compounds into free flowing pastes prior to being fed into tableting machines. Stainless steel mixers are additionally used to produce homogeneous pharmaceutical mixtures by mixing multiple liquid pharmaceutical compounds together.
Stainless steel is utilized because the above-described processes are preferably and frequently required to be carried out according to stringent sanitary requirements. Stainless steel allows minimum contaminant accumulation on the mixer surfaces. This is due to the fact that stainless steel is easily cleaned and resistant to corrosion. Many mixers present in the art currently use stainless steel components in their mixer assemblies. These components range from stainless steel motors and shafts to mixing vessels and speed reducers. These mixers and mixer components have drawbacks however.
The cost of using stainless steel to manufacture mixers and mixer components is significantly high when compared to using conventional materials such as iron or steel. As a result of this high cost, the mixer purchase price is substantially higher than that of standard mixers. Due to this high purchase price, the cost of manufacturing and producing products with these stainless steel mixers increases. The cost is particularly noticeable in the case of drive components such as motors and/or speed reducers, which have a large number of complex parts. It is very expensive, for example, to manufacture a speed reducer so that all the exposed parts are made of stainless steel.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a housing for covering a drive system components for use in sanitary mixing applications. More particularly, there is a need for a housing that encloses a drive component such as a mixer gearbox and/or speed reducer, so that the gearbox and/or speed reducer has its exposed surfaces made of a material that is easily cleanable and/or resists corrosion, but at a significantly lower cost.